Westliche Altstadt

The street of houses leading to St. Michaels Church is called “Auf dem Meere” and part of the so-called subsidence area. In some spots the ground water table is less than one metre below the earth. Due to this, the cellars cannot be used in almost all of the houses and most of them have been filled in for safety reasons.

House No.9 in the middle of the street is especially eye-catching. Massive subsidence caused by the salt mining made the house shift quite a bit. The middle part of this neo-classical building has a basement, so this part did not move as much as the sides of the house.

The street which is running parallel is called “Neue Sülze” and runs from the town hall to the saline. It forms the edge of the salt deposit. The surface extends over 1.2 sq kilometres, making it one of the largest in North Germany. The pure salt is found at 35-40 metres. In successful years, the people from Lüneburg extracted 25,000 tons of salt per annum. Over the years, depressions became more frequent. Depleted caves collapsed and took the houses built on top with them. The subsidence was the reason why a whole district was scheduled for demolition after the Second World War. Despite massive protests, about 180 houses with over 600 flats were torn down. Only when the „Arbeitskreis Lüneburger Altstadt“, kurz ALA [als Wort, nicht als Einzelbuchstaben aussprechen] was founded in 1972, the district could be saved with the help of donations. ALA’s Renaissance fairs are legendary, all the net profits from these events are used for monument preservation.